SFWoA First time - 8/25

Jmstuckman

Saturday, August 25, 2001 8:38 PM

Here is what we rode: Batman: A nice B&M. The beginning and color scheme reminded me of Mantis very much (actually thought that I was at CP when I looked at it LOL) Actually running 2 trains! Villain: Nice woodie SF has there. Superman: I didn't think the ride was as exciting than the others. A great ride for a walk-on in the morning though. I did make a couple of observations on this ride. The first one: The people in the fastlane line were actually waiting LONGER than us in the main queue!!! Second: I don't know what was going on. A policeman walked up to a man and the man said something about not knowing what had happened. The policeman then walked up to a young girl and said 'What did he do to you?' She said something to the policeman and in a minute the policeman HIT her!!! Ok, it was more like a hard tap, but you still don't do that to little kids in front of everyone. "Look at me while I'm talking to you!!" he said. She said "I'm leaving let's go" (to her friends) and ran off of the ride. "Bye-bye!" the policeman rudely said while waving to her. The only thing that I can think of is that the girl was making up some obviously false story about how the man touched her. You still shouldn't do that though! Notice that this has nothing to do with Six Flags, I think he actually was a sheriff who has nothing to do with the park. Serial Thriller: Get a bunch of random inversions. Weld them together. Call it a "roller coaster." That's what Serial Thriller was like. And the controls operator. No, I do NOT want you to put your microphone next to your boombox so we can hear your music in lo-fi! Especially if doing that slows down the already slow queue. Uncomfortable seat design too. Big Dipper: Wow!!!! That little coaster certainly packs a huge punch!!!!! Raging Wolf Bobs: And why does this ride exist? X-Flight: ????? The first time I rode it, it was running one train. The line was about an hour and a half to get through that tiny queue. They really need to build more queue rails on this ride. Did they expect the queue to never fill up or something? The second time, it was running one train. They added and removed a train a few times (taking quite a while each time) and finally started dispatching at an interval of about 5 or 6 minutes. I hope the problem was with the ride and not the crew! After a while they got the (one-train) interval down to 3:30. Doesn't sound bad, but I calculated that to be only 410 PPH! They added another train right before I got to the station. In the station, I saw what the problem was (ride was still dispatching slow.) They had only one person checking the (complicated) restraints! I realize that they may have staffing issues, but I'm sure that they could have pulled some reliable employee SOMEWHERE out of the park and trained for restraints for a couple hours. The wait ended up being 2 1/2 hours. We actually measured our queue movement speed (at one point) at less than 1 cm/sec (the average ant walks faster.) And what happened during the wait? One of the ride ops came down during downtime and started flirting with a random woman. He then took her up the exit and let her skip the (at that point) 2 hour queue!!!!!!!!! Ops SHOULD NOT be able to do that!!!!!! And the fainting. Someone fainted in the queue. WE NEED A MEDIC! a guy yelled. Someone ran up the exit and asked for a doctor. How long did it take? FIFTEEN MINUTES. It took FIFTEEN minutes for anyone to come!!!!!! What if it was serious? What would have the park done? Are they prepared for something like this? Oh, the ride? X-flight is a GREAT coaster!! I don't know about you, but I think that few sensations compare with the sensation of flying down the first drop. I thought that the restraints were well-designed and pretty comfortable (though hard to undo, especially when the same seat won’t unfasten every time.) Bad things: They should use tape to mark broken seats - please! They should train staff to undo the seatbelt on an empty seat after the ride so we don't think it's broken. Paths are too narrow and congested. Expensive food! The worker was busy yelling (yes yelling at) the flies buzzing around and didn't wait on people much, LOL. Nobody cleaning tables – a mess. The fastlane on Roadrunner Express was quite a sight. That's it, don't teach your kids to be patient and they could grow up to be impatient brats. Smoking in the queues? I do not breathe very well in smoke. I don't have asthma or anything, but it doesn't feel great. It's so nice that the park did not try to stop people from smoking. It doesn't feel like a theme park - it feels like a park(ing lot) with rides in it. They need more gardens, food stands, etc. Paths were fine, but much trash outside of the queue rails.

Oh, and I did not look in the bathrooms. Maybe that was good.

Good things: A good selection of coasters! I assume that the wildlife park and sea park were okay, but we never set foot in either. From what I hear, the park is slowly improving.

This could be a top-notch park, but many (some, like the path width, are uncorrectable) things would need to be fixed! ----------------- A bad day at Cedar Point is better than a good day at work.

Coastercraver

Sunday, August 26, 2001 11:38 AM

Unless more than one person passed out in the que for X-Flight yesterday, I was in the que the same time as you were! I haven't written my trip report yet, but look for it later tonight. ----------------- Yet another coaster-craving yuppie

Kathryn

Sunday, August 26, 2001 5:23 PM

I went to SFO about two weeks ago and Superman in the back seat was my absolute favorite ride!! I went on it about 5 times in a row. NO lines at all. Maybe because it was raining. I just kept hopping off and running back into line.

I wanted to mention something that has nothing to do with the rides, but just something my friend and I observed throughout the day. There was one guy (with 3 friends) who limped onto Mind Eraser and rode in the seat that we wanted. Didn't bother us, until we kept seeing him around the park walking at a fast pace without ANY limp at all. Then we watched him on other rides, going up the back way, then boom.... a limp. At least he remembered to always limp on the same leg.......

Shady Z

Monday, August 27, 2001 6:46 AM

Well, this goes along with what I've said before in these rapidly growing parks. They keep adding rides and attractions, but forget about the comfort levels and improving them. Last year when I went to SFWOA, they had just changed over from Geugea Lake (sorry gang, did I spell that right?). It was obvious that there were cramped pathways that needed to be widened, employees better trained and staffed, and improving some of the food areas. The one we went to out by the water park was pretty nasty and looked like something you could just go to the local grocery store to get (in fact I think they did). Sorry to hear they haven't improved those nagging issues (smoking in queues is a big downer in my opinion too). Hopefully next year they'll work on that instead of adding yet another attraction.

CoasterBoy

Monday, August 27, 2001 9:34 PM

The 1cm/sec comment I thought was pretty funny. I guess it is a staff problem they have up there. I went on the 22nd for a free day and they only had 1 station for x-flight. Because I practiced with the school track team last spring I got on the first ride out, but I wouldn't want to wait even a half hour for that. There are better rides there with shorter waits.